United Nations

The United Nations is not "the devil," so a papal think tank is free to collaborate with the international body as well as people of any political persuasion, said Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The church will continue to collaborate with the United Nations on any joint project that "does not go against the doctrine of the church," he said at a news conference July 15.

Five centuries-old Spanish missions in Texas newly declared as World Heritage Sites by a U.N. agency "have helped to shape the face of San Antonio," said Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller.

"They are still a haven of culture and history," he said in a statement Monday. "We especially value that they continue as active parishes of the archdiocese, where hundreds of families on the city's south side continue to gather for prayer within the original walls, which many dedicated persons have worked to preserve over the years."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the announcement that Pope Francis would visit the United Nations the morning of Sept. 25 to address the U.N. General Assembly.

In a statement Wednesday, the United Nations also said the pope would meet separately with the secretary-general and with the president of the General Assembly and would participate in a town hall gathering with U.N. staff.

Pope Francis called on world leaders, activists and people of faith to pull together to rid the world of the threat of nuclear weapons.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, read the pope's statement Monday in Vienna at the opening of Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

In his message, Pope Francis restated the Vatican's long-standing advocacy for the global elimination of nuclear weapons and said peace is not just a balance of power, "but true justice."

Millions of the world's children today are victims of armed conflict, pornography and sexual trafficking, and still more "are denied the most fundamental right to life," said the Vatican's nuncio to the United Nations.

"Prenatal selection eliminates babies suspected to have disabilities and female children simply because of their sex," Archbishop Berardito Auza said Oct. 17 in a statement to the U.N. Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, which was discussing the rights of children.

The United Nations' framework provides the "only viable way" of dealing with the global nature of modern terrorism "which knows no borders," the Vatican's secretary of state told the U.N. General Assembly on Monday.

"This reality requires a renewed United Nations that undertakes to foster and preserve peace," said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, emphasizing that recent terrorist activity is "criminal behavior that is not envisaged by the juridical configuration of the United Nations charter."